Where Are They Now?

“Have you ever noticed,” the chairman of Citigroup, Richard D. Parsons, asked The Observer this Monday evening, “that in the NFL, or in the NBA, or in Major League Baseball, this guy was a failure at Cleveland, and then he becomes the coach in Houston? These guys just move around from one team to another. Read More

Thomas Russo, the Secret Scribe of AIG

One of the most important people in finance was overlooking Central Park from his Fifth Avenue apartment, enjoying the Bach that his twin teenage daughters were playing on violin and speaking to the young Fulbright scholars from Iraq and China he’d invited for a reception. “In everything I do, I always ask myself, ‘Am I Read More

Bloomberg Breaks Out the Elbow Grease for Wall Street

After Lehman Brothers collapsed last fall, it quickly became clear to the Bloomberg administration that the spiraling economic crisis was going to hit New York especially hard. The financial sector had been the city’s economic engine, driving real wages and estate prices up citywide.

So the Bloomberg administration did what it so often does Read More

A Short-Term Curse

Author Michael Lewis and hedge fund manager David Einhorn in The New York Times over the weekend on the genesis of the current crisis: "Our financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this Read More